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Congress Approves Pipeline Safety Bill

By Dan Frosch December 16, 2011 10:29 amDecember 16, 2011 10:29 am

ReutersOil in the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Mich., after a pipeline rupture last year.

A bill doubling the maximum fines that pipeline operators face for safety violations easily cleared the House and Senate this week along with other provisions intended to strengthen rules on oil and gas pipeline safety that critics have faulted as weak.

The pipeline safety measures were drafted in response to a series of high-profile spills and accidents in recent years, including a rupture in July that spilled oil into the Yellowstone River in Montana and another last year in a tributary in Michigan that sent crude flowing into the Kalamazoo River.

In addition to the increase in potential fines for violations, from $1 million to $2 million, the legislation allows the Secretary of Transportation to mandate automated shut-off valves on new or replaced pipelines to prevent spills.

Earlier in the week the House and Senate mistakenly passed the wrong version of the pipeline bill because of a clerical error, but the House revoted on the correct one on Wednesday and the Senate did the same on Thursday.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in a statement that communities near pipelines “can rest a little easier knowing that Congress has implemented tougher safety rules.”

Yet some safety experts, while acknowledging that the legislation was an improvement over the much-faulted current regulations, said that it did not go far enough.
They pointed out that the National Transportation Safety Board recently recommended that operators be required to install automated shut-off valves on all existing pipelines as well as new ones. The board’s recommendations resulted from a investigation by its staff into a natural gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people in San Bruno, Calif., last year.

Nor does the legislation create standards for leak detection systems on pipelines to ensure that accidents are swiftly identified. The final regulations for such systems will not be set until a study and rule-making process are completed, which could take at least two years.

“I think the bill has a number of good things in it,” said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group based in Washington State. “We would have liked to have seen more.”

Mr. Weimer said he would have liked to have seen the bill adhere to the recommendation on automated valves and to establish clearer metrics so that regulators could more easily assess whether operators were sticking to the rules.

But given the current makeup of the House,” with a strong pro-industry tilt among conservative Republicans, “any step forward is good at this point,” Mr. Weiner said.

Oil and gas industry groups praised the bill, which also allows the Transportation secretary to add an additional 10 inspectors to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the federal agency that oversees pipelines. The agency currently has 124 inspectors.

“I think this builds on many of the improvements that P.H.M.S.A. is already considering and that the industry is working on,” said Peter Lidiak, pipeline director for the American Petroleum Institute.

An examination this year of federal reports and agency data by The New York Times showed that the pipeline agency was chronically short of inspectors and lacked the resources needed to hire more, leaving too much of the regulatory control in the hands of operators themselves.

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign, was reached as Republican lawmakers pressed President Obama to speed approval of the proposed 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry Canadian oil sands crude from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.

The State Department has put off a decision pending changes in the route and further environmental reviews, making it highly likely that it will not issue a final determination until after the 2012 elections. But this week House Republicans, arguing that the pipeline was a shovel-ready source of thousands of jobs, pushed through a bill extending the payroll tax cut that includes a provision to expedite the Keystone’s construction.

President Obama has vowed to veto the tax cut legislation if it addresses Keystone.

While the pipeline safety bill does not mention Keystone, it calls for a study on whether additional pipeline regulations are needed for oil sands crude, which environmentalists contend is more corrosive and difficult to clean if spilled.

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